I was once a beginner shucker. And after a bit of practice and a couple of minor injuries, I now consider myself an intermediate shucker, which means I can probably still injure myself if I get too cocky.

Oysters on the halfshell. Can you hear them squealing? I do, and I don't care.

You need towels, a shucking knife or other sturdy knife with a stiff blade.

Is it hard to shuck an oyster? Yes. Can one hurt one's self while shucking an oyster? Yes.

Ain't she sweet? Oyster in shell waiting to be violated.

Here goes the surgical procedure:

Lay the oyster down on a towel with the bottom facing up and hinge pointing towards your dominant hand (i.e. the hand with which you would use to stab someone using a weapon). The bottom side is usually the side that curves upwards (concave side up).

Ain't she sweet? Oyster in shell waiting to be violated.

Wrap and hold the front end of the oyster in the towel. Wiggle and jam the shucker/knife into the back hinge of the oyster until you feel it sitting firmly in the hinge.

Jamming the shucker/knife into the back hinge of the oyster.

Turn the knife/shucker 90 degrees (90°) until the hinge is busted.

Turn the shucking knife 90° degrees to unhinge the shell and listen to the oyster scream in pain.

Run the knife along the inside top lid of the oyster to loosen the meat and then remove the top shell/lid.

Rinse the oyster meat under cold running water to wash away any sand that might be floating around. The oyster is still attached to the bottom shell.

Run the knife underneath the oyster meat along the bottom shell to loosen the rest of the meat. Gently rinse again.

Scoop the screaming oyster into your mout. Savour it as it screams silently down towards your digestive tract!

Screaming, disrobed oyster.

And that is the end of my lesson in shucking an oyster. The end. Of the oyster.

05 June 2014

In this neck of the woods, water spinach (ong choy, tong choy 蕹菜 in Canto) is pretty expensive, running usually about $5/lb, which is probably why local Thai digs sell tiny plates of stir-fried kangkung for $15 (not naming names because it will incite certain backlash).IMHO, water spinach best served hot, salty and spicy.

Ipomea aquatica is officially a Federal Noxious Weed in the US, which makes it illegal to grow and import without a permit (however, nothing *really* stops Asians from doing otherwise).

Unless you pull a Gabe, you can't really mess this up unless you overcook it.

Forget salad: water spinach with anchovy sauce, chilis and garlic are an excellent way of winning friends.

Water spinach with garlic, soy and fish sauce (nam pla, which is technically not vegetarian)

Belacan kangkung(water spinach with shrimp paste, which is not very vegetarian, unless you consider shrimp a vegetable but last time I checked, shrimp did now grow out of the ground)

22 November 2013

'Tis the season for one of the most tasty fruits ever: pomegranates. Pomegranates are to the fruit world what we might call auto-cockblockers: they're so difficult to peel and extract the fruit that it's like they purposefully evolved that way... hard-to-get, yet strangely making them more enticing, attractive... clever, but not more clever than us!

Thankfully, there is the Internets, and though it's 99% littered with garbage, the rest is actually useful; many bloggers/vloggers have shared many different ways to get to the pomegranate fruit (WHICH, technically-speaking are NOT the seeds, rather are the arils (or outgrowth) that contain the seeds).

Pomegranate arils

The easiest way I have found so far is whacking the fruit with a spoon (or in my case, was a tiny frying pan stolen from a tiny dwarf).

There is no longer any need to pick out every individual aril and sully your hands to get to the fruit. Let you your frustrations out and not get arrested! (Great for if your boss has been on your case for the tiniest, most irrelevant issues that don't prevent the job from getting done but because he is extremely uptight and missing the big picture... but I digress.)

Here's how to beat your pomegranate:

Score the pomegranate fruit all the way around its "equator" (crosswise, I guess). Don't slice too deeply into the fruit.

Twist both halves apart.

A pomegranate split in half. O, the horror!

Take one half and loosen the arils from the membrane (mesocarp) all the way around by gently pressing on the sides from the outside. Repeat massage with other half.

Hold the pomegranate half from underneath over a bowl with the open side downwards and smack the outer skin all the way around until all the arils have dropped into the bowl. Repeat the abuse with other half.

Tap that pom.

And you're done. No peeling, no post-pom-peeling countertop murder scene (well, only a minor one at least).

Aftermath of the Pomegranate War of 2013. You could avoid this if you want by putting a dishcloth under the bowl.

02 August 2013

Outside of Quebec City in Canada lies a mysteriously beautiful little island that poops out the best strawberries this side of the planet that are not genetically engineered; it is called l'Île d'Orléans (Island of Orleans).

My cousin, RayRay, and my brother, Subordinate Chow along with Minimai picked a mounded box of fresh strawberries from l'Île Orléans and only ate five from the box cause they had gorged on them at the U-pick and refused to eat any more.

1 to 2 tsp (5 to 10ml) lemon or lime zest (use a Microplane grater to get finer zests (not an endorsement... just saying))

2 Tbs (30 ml) vodka (** makes it easier to scoop but is optional **)

Blend the bollocks out of the strawberries in a blender or food processor.

Add to the blender the sugar and syrup, vodka, lemon juice and zest.

Roll up the basil leaves into cigars to slice them thinly without crushing them (chiffonade), then put them in the blender and pulse until evenly combined.

Freeze in ice cream/frozen yogurt, as per the instructions for your contraption.

Russian vodka is an excellent solute for freezing-point depression and post-exam depression.

(And for those who hate basil, such as Frawley, you can refrain from using basil and instead use something like mint (using about the same amount) or experiment with lavender or pepper (though frankly, picking strawberry seeds from your teeth is enough of a pain in the arse that probably does not complement picking ground pepper out at the same time...)).

01 July 2013

François M, the photographer of the palo azul blue witch tea I posted back here brought to my attention that he figured out by flicking his lights on and off that the blue was a type of fluorescence.

(Frankly, after the first tasting, I'm not sure why François and Lin made more of that tea, especially if it tasted like butt the first time...)

Serendipitously, François found that the blue colour wasn't as potent as before, while they made the tea at night under indoor lighting; he thought it was because the tea was just old and gross.

The next morning, however, he observed that the blue colour was actually quite strong in the daylight and that the blue colour was not, in fact, drug-induced, and no gremlins had broken in overnight. This, he determined, that it had more to do with the presence of UV light in sunlight and lack of it in household light sources.

And then Google barfed this out when he looked for fluorescent tea: Lignum nephriticum (meaning something like "woody kidneys" (hence its name, kidney wood).

[Palo azul in the morning light. Photo courtesy of François M. BTW, he is still for hire...]

So for those who think this blue witch tea has magical properties, once again, sciencequashes magic. It might be a diuretic but frankly, you could just drink lemonade to help you urinate if you're that desperate.

(François is now waiting for a UV flashlight he just ordered to confirm his theory...)

(I know I have many excuses for the lapse between posts, and they are numerous but valid and I will fight anyone who complains.)

31 March 2013

I picked these egg molds up in Tokyo, at Tokyu Hands, also known as the best store in the world. They came in handy for making Easter-themed gobbledygook.

[Bunny and teddy bear face egg moulds (yudetama gokko)]

Basically, take some boiled chicken eggs, peel them while they're warm and then plop them in these kawaii-shaped molds called yudetama gokko, which is Japanese for "make your food cute so people don't think it tastes gross" (though the Interwebs tells me the alternate meaning is "boiled egg make-believe").

Drop them in ice water for 10 minutes or refrigerate them until they're cool. Then you can unmold them and destroy their cuteness, as you wish.

[Ugly egg Easter bearface and bunny. I don't know how to order these adjectives anymore.]

21 February 2013

This past February 10, we celebrated Chinese New Year, the age-old holiday that brings families and friends together, highlighted by bringing out the most superstitious traits of Chinese people around the world.

For instance, one is not to do any of the following on or during the New Year grace period:

I think I had better run through the roster of anti-bad luck practices this year because so far, it hasn't started out well: I got bit by a spider while I was sleeping, and if I get anything lower than a B average this semester, I will get demoted from "token Asian" to just "Asian".

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